Differential Brain Activation By Chinese And Western Visual Food Stimuli In Obese And Normal-weight Adults

Obesity,as a hot topic in the world,not only has a negative impact on individual health,but also endangers life.With the increasing ratio of overweight and obesity worldwide,its psychophysiological mechanism has been paid more and more attention by domestic and foreign scholars.In the context of global cultural integration,the individual food intake is no longer only a single Chinese food,and Western food is also popular.This study combines Chinese and Western food culture and food rewards to discuss the neural mechanism of feeding behavior.In Study 1,we selected food images with higher identification rates and assessed the degree of food liking,wanting,and difficulty resisting between Chinese and Western food(N=106).The result showed the scores on Chinese food craving were significantly higher than Western food indicating that individuals are more sensitive to the reward value of Chinese food.Besides,participants were more fond of meal food which contains more food items than single food which only contains one food item.In Study 2,the participants were divided into normal weight group(N=27)and obesity group(N=26).The first behavior questionnaire was to measure the demographic variables,in addition also includes BIS/BAS,DASS,PFS questionnaires,the results showed that the scores on frequency of eating Western food,BASR and PFS in obese people was higher than that in normal-weight indicating that obesity eat more Western food and are more sensitive to food reward signals than normal-weight individual.After questionnaire measure,Chinese and Western food images were presented to participants and scanning at the same time,the result showed that when viewing Chinese and Western food images,no significant difference in brain activation between groups,which may be the result of the adoption of cognitive strategies,nevertheless,when presented single food images,the result showed significant differences in activation,which may be related to the difference of calorie between Chinese and Western single food.However,in the face of meal food images,no significant activation differences was found.After the scan,the participants were responded to simple behavior measure assess the degree of liking,wanting,and difficulty resisting for Chinese and Western food.The result showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups in liking,wanting and difficulty resisting,but a significant difference betweenthe Chinese and the Western single food,concretely embodied in the scores of Chinese food liking was higher than that of Western food.Finally,through correlation analysis between scores on behavioral indicators and ROI % BOLD signal change,we found significant positive correlation between lingual gyrus and difficulty resisting,BASR indicating that when we recognize more rewarding value signals,the more difficult to inhibit food craving,the stronger the activation of lingual gyrus.The results reflect the limitation of food image materials in this study,which was not strictly controlled by the information contained in the food images which may cause the difference of food craving for individuals.The study related food cues in the future should pay more attention to the strictness and standardization of the screening of image materials.